fujitsu siemens amilo pro

[fatlad]

Hi All

My sons laptop about 5 years old very slow and when it boots up you can hardly the desktop screen very dark and when you try to brighten the screen nothing happens

many thanks

[ruudvandan]

when you say you can hardly see the screen, what exactly do you mean? Is it completely black with faint outlines? Can you see any colours?

[fatlad]

hi ruudvandan

Sorry for the long delay, its near enough black if you put the screen to the light you can just about see the outline of windows desktop.

But when you turn it on and go into the boot menu the screen is perfect all the colour are right and the screen has the right brightness.

Many Thanks
Fatlad

[ruudvandan]

My initial thoughts would be that the backlight has gone, but since you can see the boot screen perfecty as normal this is clearly not the case. So it is more than likely to be a software problem.

Get your recovery CD, or windows installation CD and boot to the CD. If the windows comes up normally then there is an problem with your installation or a dodgy driver in there and you can select to repair this. If however there's nothing on your laptop that you want to keep I would suggest a clean install. Either way back up anything you need on there if you can and do a clean install. The newer the installation the less crap there is on there and the faster it will run.

If the windows installation menu comes up blacked out (like it is now) then I have no clue what the problem is I'm afraid.

[fatlad]

Thanks Ruud

I've tried the recovery disc but when i put the disc in you can hear the disc run, and when it try's to run the blank screen keeps flashing.

Also can you tell me how to reinstall the windows disc and any more help would be gratefully appreciated.

Many thanks
Peter

[caveman_nige]

sound slike your backlight on the screen has died, quite a common fault on a laptop of that age.. you can get replacements, you will need to remove the plastic surround (known as the bezel) from the lcd and get to the wires.. once you have the bezel off and the wires are visible you will see a small circuit (about 1cm wide and 10 cm long, but this sizes varies) that they all connect to called the 'backlight invertor).. remove this and look at the part numbers on the back of the inverter, put this part number in google and have a hunt around for spares.. If you cannot find spares then google 'backlight inverter repair uk) and you will find stack of places that can sort it for you..

[ruudvandan]

nige, my initial thoughts were the backlight too, but hoe does the boot screen show up if the backlight has gone? surely nothing would show?

[caveman_nige]

ooops, missed that part... yeah ruud, thats correct, the inverter would be 100% failed not just for windoze.. could be a few things now.. try booting it up with a live CD from Hiren or use an Ubuntu live CD.. (these will not write to your harddisk just run an operating system from the RAM).. Let us know what happens

A hiren live cd download link can be found here

http://www.digital-kaos.co.uk/forums/f90/hirens-bootcd-v10-1-193-mb-68646/